This invention pertains to power transmission, and more particularly to apparatus for driving mobile storage carriages.
Mobile storage systems, for storing books, supplies, and files are in widespread use where it is important to provide high density storage, such as in offices, schools, and libraries. My U.S. Pat. No. 5,007,351 describes an improved power transmission mechanism for use in such systems.
Typical mobile storage systems include two or more parallel rails embedded in or attached to a building floor. One or more relatively long and narrow carriages span the rails. The carriages may exceed eighty feet in length, and the number and spacing of the rails are chosen to suit the particular carriage length. The carriages are usually supported by a pair of wheels rolling along each of the rails.
The carriages may be designed to move along the rails under manual power. For that purpose, a hand wheel is usually mounted to a carriage end panel. The hand wheel is connected by various drive components to a shaft that in turn is connected with at least one of the carriage wheels. Manually rotating the hand wheel causes the drive wheels to rotate and move the carriage. Electrically powered carriages are also in wide-spread use. With that design, a suitable electric motor is substituted for the manual hand wheel. The motor shaft is mechanically connected through a suitable mechanism to the carriage drive wheels.
It has been a common practice to design mobile carriages such that drive wheels are located along the length of the carriage on one side of the carriage. These prior designs require a long shaft for connecting the drive wheels along the carriage length. The long shafts are awkward to assemble and service. In addition, the long shafts generally undergo torsional wind-up when used with heavy carriages, such that, due to twisting of the shaft along its length, the drive wheels at the carriage end remote from the electric motor or hand wheel do not rotate as fast as the drive wheels at the end at which the shaft is rotationally driven. Consequently, despite the use of flanges on the drive wheels, the carriages can tend to skew as they are driven along the rails.
In accordance with my earlier patent, a single driving mechanism was provided at the center of the carriage. However, a need has continued to exist for improved mobile storage carriages with more than one drive mechanism, but which would overcome the aforementioned skewing problem encountered with the prior art.